You Don't Have to read It, But I, Apparently, Had to Write It.

Wow!  Is this any way to run a blog?  Brag about your blogiversary and then disappear for the rest of the month?  Even though it's a short month, I mean come on!

For some reason,  it's been a mediocre month at best.  I've got to admit to being in kind of a slump the last few weeks.  I think it started with the two weeks everyone was sick.  That takes a lot out of a girl, and there seemed to be something depressing about this cold, anyway.  It made us all out of sorts and super cranky, as well as, you know, sick.  And just like my ear still hurts and feels a little like there's liquid in it-- gross, right?-- I still feel kind of cranky and out of sorts.  I feel bad about that, because really, it's been weeks, what's my problem? And then I feel worse, like all I need is to buck the hell up and stop being such a drag on the program.  Then all I want to do is sleep.  

We did enjoy our anniversary on Valentine's Day.  My son Justin took the girls out and we recreated our first date by getting a pizza and eating it from the coffee table while making wisecracks about what was on TV.  Yeah, we're a crazy couple, just try to keep up with us!  

But a couple of days later, I was right back to blah.  I've been waiting until I felt better to write, but since that hasn't actually happened, I decided to write anyway, and see if that helped.  In addition to feeling cranky, I've been feeling poor, and fat, and feeling those things makes me feel like I must be stupid, because those are thing you can fix, right?  But I haven't, so it must be me.  Perhaps you can now clearly picture me wallowing in self-doubt and self-pity the way pigs wallow in mud.  But I think pigs are happy when they wallow, and at best, I am just "meh."

With a new month on the horizon, I'm going to try to get on the other side of this.  I know it's up to me to do it.  And without digressing too much, I have to say that I find taking responsibility for the direction of one's life to be the central problem (though also, the central joy) of being an adult.  That's it right there, isn't it? When you know that you are responsible for all the choices you've made, and that all the choices you've made have brought you to your present state, sometimes you're proud of yourself, and feel lucky and smart. And sometimes, you just feel "meh."

Goodbye February 2014, it's been a slice. 


Image is from here. I should have read the article, and maybe I will soon, but for now, all I've done is borrow the image.

In Sickness and in Sickness

Last week, the whole family was sick with some kind of evil upper respiratory virus that included stomach complications. No need for gross detail, just allow "complications" convey what I mean here. The girls each ran fevers, had cruddy colds and suffered through hacking coughs, which kept them home from school for a few days. I am finishing up the virus myself, with an earache and laryngitis, but  Mike was hit the worst, by far.   Saturday evening, there was the all over ache of fever, accompanied by chills.  These were layered with a pounding headache, a sore throat, and sinus congestion.  By Sunday night, he was crawling to bed before dinner, saying "I have to try to sleep this off, so I can go in to work tomorrow."  By two a.m., he was experiencing those "complications," and dragging himself back to bed, stopping only long enough to email his boss to let him know that the trip downtown to work was not going to happen.  

He couldn't really eat on Monday, though he kept up a regimen of acetaminophen and tried to stay hydrated.  "I should feel better tomorrow," he said around five o'clock, before going to sleep only five hours before his regular bed time.  The sleeping part didn't go all that well, though, and the aches and pains persisted and were joined by a tremendous cough.  Rather than detail the rest of the week, I will just say that he felt like a pile of crap and couldn't really shake it.  He didn't even feel well enough to get himself to the doctor's office (when you feel like hell, public transportation is no small undertaking) until the end of the week.  Then, he was given antibiotics which finally set him on the road to recovery, as magic wonder drugs they are supposed to do. He went back to work today, though he was clearly dragging by the time he got home.

If I haven't lost you in the description of my husband's week of illness, you might at least be wondering why, in the name of all that's holy, I would devote such a long paragraph to such a thing.  It might just be that illness overwhelmed me this week.  Frankly, I got to a point this Saturday where the sound of anyone coughing made me want to hit myself in the head with a large hammer.  Among the four of us, the sputtering, stuttering, horking sound was constant, filling the apartment like a cacophonous piece of modern music composed to irritate and aggravate the listener.  Maybe, because I have been sick myself, I was just fascinated by the fact that someone could be sicker.

I can't actually remember when I've seen Mike this sick, even though we've certainly taken turns suffering through colds and stomach bugs.  And we both get migraines.  And of course, there were my two pregnancies, which, while not technically illnesses, offered him the chance to see me wretchedly ill and in tremendous pain. (Though he has said he did enjoy seeing me practically bite the head off the poor resident who tried, in vain, to administer an epidural while I was in labor with Delia. Or was it Fiona?  Funny how those episodes kind of run together.) I have been with him through some awfully invasive tests and a singularly harrowing trip to the emergency room, not to mention surgery in response to cancer. We've also waited (and worried) together for test results. It sounds like a lot of suffering, when you stack it up like that, and we have only just started to grow old-- him first of course, because I am his much younger wife...

This is the thing though, it's right out of the vows, right?  Sickness and health.  Richer and poorer.  As long as we both shall live.  Even when it seems like a lot more sickness and a lot less richer, we've gotten through it together.  This sick week was a reminder of that.  As he started to feel better this weekend, Mike put it well, "I wouldn't want to be sick with anyone but you, sweetie."  And even though I can't wait until the coughing stops, that goes double for me.  

It's My Blogiversary!

I guess that's what you call it, right?  I was off to a singularly inauspicious start one year ago today. Stats show 67 posts for the year, which is about one and a little-less-than-a-quarter each week.  Of course, I wasn't anywhere near that consistent.  The posts have come in clumps, bunches, fits and starts.

I remember thinking about starting a blog for months before I actually made myself put it together.  First, it took me a while to decide on a name-- I went through many possibilities, including "Extemporanea!" from a line in the Dorothy Parker poem I mentioned in this post, because I thought it would be so original.  Then I found out that it had already been used by other bloggers who may or may not have been fans of the Algonquin wits of the 1930's.  I moved on with a heavy sigh.  For a while, I considered "The Journal of Reduced Circumstances," but finally decided that it sounded too academic, and somehow, too Dickensian, to attract the readers I was hoping for.  One night, while I was reviewing possibilities during a routine bout of insomnia, "Ordinary Good Fortune" popped into my head, and kind of stuck.  It seemed to catch the every day aspects of life, and the more ethereal moments too.  I was hoping to touch on both in the blog.

The rest was just a matter of figuring out how to put it on the page.  How long was that process?  Well, let's just say that I had initially aimed for the start of the blog to coincide with the start of the year, but I'm writing about this blogiversary on February 1, 2014. So, you do the math--  if you want to, that is, because here on my blog, you don't have to do the math. (Unless you like math, and then, by all means, be my guest.)  

Have I fulfilled all of my blogging dreams and aspirations this year? Well, no, because blogging has turned out to be like all of the rest of the projects and undertakings and endeavors in my life:  not quite what I thought it would be.  I thought, for instance, that I would write more about cooking, with recipes included, but actually making the recipes intelligible, then taking pictures of actual food so that it looks somewhat appetizing were two tasks that have thus far proven themselves beyond my skill set. Ditto for craft projects. I may still do that kind of thing some day, because I would like to keep the blog going, and I hope that I will keep improving. 

But I'm not going to make either of us any promises today.  Instead, I'm just going to be happy that I've worked on this for a year, and that I like how a lot of the posts have turned out, and that many of you have commented and let me know that you liked them too.  That has meant a lot.  It has been extraordinary good fortune, in fact.




*I picked the "Celebrate" image. above, because it appears on a first class US postage stamp, which is just the kind of self-referential  "in-joke" I like to find when I read a blog regularly.  You're welcome.

An Epiphany, of Sorts, In a Cluttered Home

I had something of an epiphany the other day. Actually, epiphany is a bit strong, as I don't really think this was a lightning bolt of life-changing revelation, maybe more like a cartoon light bulb going on above a cartoon head in, you know, a cartoon.  But I do like the word epiphany, and they say that if you don't use your vocabulary, you lose it. It terrifies me to think of all the words I used to know that I have already lost command of through simple disuse.  So I will sprinkle the ones I still have left over this blog. Take that, impending Alzheimer's!

Anyway... the light bulb went on this past Sunday afternoon, when my brother in law dropped by unexpectedly to bring something for the girls.  Delia was recovering from a cold, and was still in her pajamas, even though it was about three thirty in the afternoon. She was wearing a pair of my high heels though, as was Fiona, because there was some kind of stuffed animal fashion show about to begin, and, as everyone knows, that is the perfect occasion for the high-low mix of heels and fleece pjs.  Mike and I had thrown on "casual" clothing early, because we knew the day would be full of laundry and chores and coffee and newspaper-reading.  So we all looked kind of sloppy, except for Fee, who had put on a fresh set of school clothes, because she had tired of the first set by noon.  (Clearly, that's why I do so much laundry.)  I don't believe any of us had combed our hair, though we had all brushed our teeth, because we're all mouth-breathing sleepers, and that means it's just icky to do anything but brush your teeth the second you get out of bed, before you even talk to anybody.  It's like a public service, you know?   

So Tim drops by, and in addition to the fact that we all looked kind of crappy, the house was a mess.  A real mess, because the girls set up a tea party on the table in the dining area, then built blanket forts in the space between the dining area and living room, then started art projects on the living room floor, getting out all the paper and drawing utensils.  You could see some of the floor, but most of it was pretty well covered by... stuff.  The girls' room was the scene of the pretend fashion show, so all the Barbies, dolls and animals were out, littering the hall, all over the floor and dresser, and lined up on the bed that I'd made before ten a.m., but which had somehow been unmade in the process of setting up the fashion show "runway." There were dishes from lunch in the kitchen sink, and, though the bathrooms were on my list of chores, I had not yet approached them for the day.  Oy!   I was suddenly ashamed to be reading the newspaper in my own house. I looked around in a panic, but there was nowhere to hide. 

Mike said, "Come on in," and Tim proceeded to pick his way through the clutter, saying "Hi" to the girls and commenting favorably on their high heels when they ran out to see him.  And then it happened.  Mike cleared some of the Times off the sofa, and Tim sat down, like there was nothing wrong with our living room.  As of my writing this, the world still has not yet exploded.  I have not been hit by a lightning bolt of judgmental wrath for the state of the house.  In case you missed the importance of this, let me spell it out for you:  I had a guest at my house while it was a crazy mess, and nothing in the universe has changed.  

While I'm certainly glad that my wretched slovenliness hasn't caused a rip in the time-space continuum or a nuclear implosion, I am kind of perplexed. (Did you catch all the vocabulary I stuffed into that sentence? Just saying...) This threatens the very foundation of my being, because I have always thought that if someone saw that my house was a mess, the world would end, or at least I would feel like it had because of the shameful judgment that would rain down upon my bowed head.  Now I'm beginning to question a lot of my dearly held assumptions, like, for instance, what if I step on a crack-- will my mother's back be okay? What about the need to wear nice underwear in case I'm in an accident?* What if one of the girls wears something two days in a row? How fast will child protective services come to get me-- or will they come at all?  

See, here's the thing: I like to think that I'm not all that concerned about what other people think and that I don't really worry much, but apparently I do care, and I do worry.  I don't want to anymore-- I want to be the relaxed person I am in my self-concept. Will I still keep my house clean?  Well, yeah, because I still want it to be clean. What I'm going to try to avoid is keeping it clean because someone might judge me if it's a mess or it's cluttered because kids leave their things out.  I'm going to try not to feel guilty reading the Sunday paper on Sunday, even if the house is a mess.  Because, really, nothing bad is going to happen...but I'm going to try to wear nice underwear anyway, just in case...


*This has already been questioned by several people I know in a lively debate, in which some people took the position that if a person was in a serious accident, their underwear might not remain clean anyway, relieving the victim of the responsibility for nice underwear in the first place.  But still, what if onlookers deemed the accident "not that serious" and then got all judgmental about the state of my undergarments?

Light bulb from here. Woman in cluttered room picture from here. Cluttered room illustration from here.

I Gotta Be Me-- Only Better

If you're like me-- and I know I am-- you're all about self improvement at this time of year. Well, actually, I am kind of about judging others and allowing myself to feel a wee bit smug about my comparative superiority, but I am working on that, for sure.  The thing is, I usually compare myself to others and find myself lacking, except maybe in trivial matters, such as grammar or vocabulary, but anyone with a dictionary or a style manual could easily overtake me there as well, so really, maybe I should just crawl back into bed and stay there.  

But seriously folks, I am trying to improve every day, and jokes about there being so much to improve aside, I find that my goals for improvement are usually mental instead of physical.  Diet and exercise are definitely on the horizon, but I know that the cause of so much of my "comfort-eating" and lackluster physical condition have to do with stress.  

So, it seems that to make a go of any physical improvement program, I have to relieve some of the stress that causes the physical issues in the first place.  That's the way this philosopher thinks about it anyway:  get to the logical root of the problem to effectively solve it.   So I'm out to reduce stress.  But I know that, even if I found a big old bag of money to solve some of the basic subsistence problems that we have month to month, most of my stresses themselves would still exist, because they involve people or issues that are deeply integrated into my existence. Really, the only thing I can change is the way I handle stress. 

As usual, it's all back on me.  I guess that's why they call it self improvement.

Right now, I don't have any kind of well-laid plan or anything, but lately it seems that everything I read points me in the general direction of trying to stay in the present rather than letting my mind leap ahead to the unknown future or get lost in nostalgic memory of the past.  I like this article about Alan Watts and his ideas about reducing anxiety that recently showed up on Brain Pickings.  His thought was that people ruin their lives by wishing for a certain future, which is a futile hope.  The more we stress about what is going to happen, the less we can enjoy what is happening right now.  The same goes for wishing ourselves back to some time in our lives that seems better than the present.  While I don't consider myself an anxious person, per se, I know that some of my stress is about what will happen tomorrow or next month or if we can't pay our bills or if this or if that.  So Watts' ideas about living in the moment today, really being present as life happens, makes sense to me.  This is a first step in a continuing process, which I will be documenting periodically in the blog.  If I'm going to improve myself, I'm going to drag all of you with me!




Self-improvement image from here.  Stress image from here-- this page has a lot of good stuff on it.  

Southwest Polar Vortex

Bloggers across the country are writing about the polar vortex-- the bitter cold, the power outages, the forced misery of life with children stuck inside for days on end because of prodigious amounts of snow and dangerously chilly daytime temperatures. Wind chill of 30 below, anyone?  I can at least say that I know the chill of this weather first hand.  The years we spent in Maine and Massachusetts contained more than one "storm of the century." I'm not exactly sure how that's possible, but that is the way I remember it, so it must be right.  

Here, we have projected highs in the 70s, and the girls have been happily back in school since yesterday.  I had to put the kids in long sleeves and jackets today, not to mention shoes with socks. There is also a small chance of rain in the next few days, and you know how messed up things get when it sprinkles.  I mean, the girls might have to take umbrellas to school, and then I'll have to listen to how they'd rather get wet than be embarrassed by using their Dora umbrella.  It's still perfectly good though, and we use them so seldom, that I am making them keep it until it doesn't actually keep rain from falling on their heads.  

As an act of climate solidarity, I put some chicken in the crock pot to make a batch of enchiladas and some chicken tortilla soup.  I figured we could do with some warm comfort food too. After all, our high temperatures may be in the 60s, but our lows are dipping into the 40s, with, you know, a wind chill of, probably less than 40, if it ever gets windy.  For Scottsdale, Arizona, that's a polar vortex, baby!

Feeling like I could do even more, I baked a cinnamon bread pudding with salted caramel sauce and promptly ate two bowls full.  I did find that pretty darn comforting.  Otherwise, I got nothing.  But hey, check back with me next August, when we've got record highs, and the weather people are apologizing for the streak of over a hundred days above a hundred degrees.  Then you can enjoy a couple of bowls of ice cream, you know,  in solidarity with me.  


Snow picture from here.  Phoenix metro forecast from here

Back in the Saddle, so to Speak

Today is the first day back to school after what used to be called Christmas Vacation, which now goes by the more politically correct, but much less festive, Winter Break.  The girls are still sleeping, as I am still in the stick-to-itive-ness phase of the New Year's resolution cycle and I am writing early, as I promised myself I would every day.  If I make it for three weeks, this is supposed to become a habit, which, if it is anything like snapping my gum, or picking at small imperfections on my skin, should stick with me for life.  I have some fear though, that only bad habits get stuck this way, as my yearly resolutions to be a better person and eat less fat have not ever really taken hold, even after some good three week runs.  

But restarts are the order of the day, so I give myself credit for ignoring the siren call of Facebook and the many meandering diversions it offers, and diving right  in to the down-to-business beginning of the new year, the mini "back to school" after vacation-- I mean, break

Last night, I rounded up the school stuff and made one last plea for the girls to get their over-the-break homework done. Actually, it was yesterday afternoon, because I can't stay up late any more, and, really, I didn't want to be looking for folders and backpacks once Downton Abbey came on-- new season for that too, of course.  I had talked with the girls, especially Fiona, who came home two weeks ago with a forty page math "activity packet" and a small art project to be turned in today, about pacing themselves and not leaving everything for the last minute.  I knew the art project could be done in an hour at most, so I set it aside to preserve it, and planned to do it Sunday morning, which is technically a whole day before the last minute.

The packet though, was a tougher thing.  There is a part of me that doesn't believe in over-the-break homework--it is supposed to be vacation, even though they only call it break now-- so I had some moral pangs about hounding Fee to get it done.  On the other hand, my best friend, who is a reading specialist, told me that kids can lose six months' ground over a two week break.  Ouch! I was torn, but not torn enough to have it be an issue every day for two weeks.  We started it Saturday.  And it was painful. There was crying, begging, screaming, outrage-- and that was all me and Mike.  Fiona had a very dramatic love-hate relationship with the whole thing, insisting she had to do it, but protesting that she couldn't, or didn't want to, or was too tired, or too hungry or too bored.  After a day that included multiple time out sessions spent in her room reflecting on how wrong it is to talk back to your parents, Fee finally buckled down and got to work. As of this morning, we're at about 85% complete, and I think that's enough.  Besides, it's time to round 'em up and move 'em out, back to school we go!

*Update-- the packet was completely untouched in Fiona's folder when she got home from school today:  the work wasn't even collected!  All that crying and misery was for nothing... I think I need a time out in my room to reflect on how important it is to let vacation be vacation-- I mean, break.  

  

"Motivation Wall" from here.  Downton pic from here.